Voting for the future

Lawyers are required to have a law degree, but not lawmakers. That meme circulated over the weekend as the nation braced for the final frenzy of vote buying, gimmickry and squid tactics related to the elections.

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

The lament about lawmakers not being required to know the law is just one of many expressions of frustration over the caliber of people we have been electing to high office.

We have stringent academic and other qualification requirements for so many types of professions and skilled work. Yet we have the least qualification requirements for positions that seriously impact people's lives and national development.

For acceptance into the Philippine Military Academy, for example, these are the requirements: high school diploma with 85 percent minimum grade point average, entry age of 17-22, natural-born citizen, single (never been married), at least five feet tall, and "physically fit and of good moral character."

Yet for the military's commander-in-chief (plus the vice president who is the automatic successor), the only requirements cover age, citizenship, 10-year Philippine residency as well as being a registered voter and "able to read and write."

For senators and congressmen, the requirements cover only citizenship, age, residency, being a registered voter and "able to read and write."

Perhaps we should be ecstatic that the framers of the Constitution deemed it wise to exclude at least the "no read, no write" — the working definition of the illiterate — from the complex task of lawmaking.

How do we expect the national leadership to be composed of the nation's best and brightest? And then we wonder why the government is so rotten.